Thursday, July 11, 2013

My Contract May Have Ended: but it sure felt like I was fired

Continued from yesterday

As the door closed behind me that final time, I don't think I fully realized the extent of what had just happened to me. The finality. That while one phase had ended, abruptly and brutally, another phase was just beginning. I worked out of the workplace - and into the world of trauma and PTSD. A world I never knew existed. A world that was to become my reality for years to come. A world that many people, including myself as I entered it, do not understand.

I had determined that staying in that hellhole of a job was not in my best interests. I needed a break.

I had had months to take a good hard look at the situation and although part of me was still, even at the last minute, hoping for a miracle, realistically I was aware of the huge toll this job and this situation were taking on me.

I no longer had time - or energy - for outside interests. My world had shrunk significantly to that office. To those people who inhabited it. To those stresses and tensions. The outside world, my husband, my family held little interest to me.

Looking back, I realize that I was in full survival mode.

However, even then, I realized that there was a greater life beyond the walls of the plant. I realized that I had other interests that I wanted to pursue. And I could not pursue them as long as I stayed in that job. I wanted more from life than life inside those four walls.

Also, my supervisor would return after her maternity leave was over, and I knew that I could not work under her. So it was best to leave - and to leave then. Even if another contract had magically been offered, I had realized that it was not in my bests interests to take it. Still, I wanted validation. Vindication. I wanted that contract to be offered. Better yet, a permanent job. I wanted to know that it had all been a mistake - on their part.

Wishful dreaming.

So yes, staying for me was not an option. Even if a miracle happened.

I was also prepared to ask to leave after the meeting, so being told to clear out and get out was not in contention either.

So since we were in agreement on the major points, why did they feel they had to end things as cruelly and abruptly as they did? Why didn't they simply tell me a month in advance, as had been their standard practice with me up to that time, that they were going in a different direction? Why didn't they hire someone in that interim to be trained so that they could make a seamless transition.

Why?

The whys are what boggles the mind. They defy logic.

To me, none of this made logical sense.

And yet, looking back as I've been writing this series, researching, analyzing, I see that maybe in some strange, twisted way it does make sense.

One of the earliest articles I read on the net, some three or four years ago, when I started looking into the possibility (which I thought was remote at that time) that I was being bullied in workplace situation #2 was that a supervisor targets one extremely good individual knowing that that person's leaving will create chaos in the office. Now, a logical, reasonable person would say that deliberately creating chaos in the office is something that should be avoided at all costs. However, this kind of supervisor will apparently deliberately create chaos in the office so that everyone - especially his or her superiors - are consumed with the chaos in the office and are not looking into major decisions the supervisor is making and implement. It's like having everyone focus on a small, brush fire while a few miles away an entire town is up in flames.

At that time, the 2 up supervisor was making major changes. Ending long-standing contracts with third-party warehouses and centralizing Western operations into one centrally-located warehouse. On paper, it sounded reasonable - and logical. On paper, it worked. In reality? That apparently was something else entirely.

Aside from the tremendous challenge of minimizing leftover stock in the existing warehouses - while (hopefully) at the same time meeting customer orders - and fully stocking the new warehouse, apparently there were major issues with the management of the new warehouse. The 2 up made other decisions that apparently didn't work out well. As a result, she was fired give or take a year or so after I was walked out. Not because of what happened to me, but because of her own mistakes.

Was I a real life, flesh and blood human being to my 2 up? Or was I simply a pawn in her chess game of management? I've always wondered. I'll never know for sure.

I walked to my car and pulled out my cell phone. I attempted to dial my daughter's number. I couldn't remember it. I was shaking. Crying. Distraught. My body and mind on auto pilot. I needed to get home. Was I safe to drive? I didn't know but knew but I would soon find out. I don't think I have ever felt so alone and so worthless as I did at that moment, freshly dumped outside the back door of the plant. Walking out of one life into another. One I was not prepared for.